Saturday, January 19, 2008

Melbourne, Australia is amazing! Though I've been here before (in 2002), I am just now realizing it is probably the best city I've ever been to! Mind you, I've never been to NYC to have that to compare it to.... The city is fairly large by my standards - about 4 million people - but the people are friendly, the city is old, but not OLD, it is well laid out and has (in my opinion) the best public transit system in the world. You can go anywhere in a reasonable amount of time and at a reasonable price using public transportation here. The system includes trains, trams and buses and it's wonderful and you use the same tickets for them all!

Big cities have such a wonderful atmosphere (once you can get past all the crazy people!!). We have gone into the city in the evening several times without the children - but usually with one or more of Michael's siblings (he has 5) and it's been so wonderful. We have gone to some of Michael's old hangouts from when he was younger and lived here and we've done A LOT of walking. During our walks we have come across some amazing buskers (street performers)....

One night we came across a Sweedish (he spoke english!) magician doing a show, so we stopped to watch. About 3 minutes in he called ME up to be his assistant for about 10 minutes!! Crazy! And some of the tricks/illusions he performed were completely baffling.

This is me with the magician after his performance and my wonderful assisting!

We've come across lots of other street performers, as well: one guy was drawing art on the sidewalks with chalk - and he was really good at it; we've seen lots of people playing keyboards, guitars and drums made of 5 gallon buckets; and even a guy who had his upright piano on wheels and had brought it with him - but by far, the best performer we've seen is The Sonic Manipulator.

This guy is amazing. I took this video last night. We like him so much we've gone to see him on 3 different occassions! After the first time we saw him, we came home and looked him up on You Tube to see what we could find!

He has posted a video that he made to give the public a little information about him. He has done so well in his performances that he lives solely off the income he makes doing his performances and he only performs on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights in the city (usually at one of 3 intersections). He has a website and can be hired for parties, as well!! Crazy! Oh yeah, and he makes all of his own instruments/sound machines, etc.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

* The first 3 days were spent with Michael's dad and stepmom (the kids were at summer camp) in Melbourne.* Then we drove about 8 hours to Adelaide where Michael's grandparents all live as well as one uncle and aunt and their 5 kids (we stayed with the uncle and aunt) and one of Michael's cousins who is married with 5 yr old twins. We spent a week in Adelaide visiting with all the cousins and grandparents and were there to help Michael's grandma (his mom's mom) celebrate her 89th birthday!* We then drove back to Melbourne, which is where we will be for the rest of our trip.

Because it's nearly impossible to chronicle our entire trip, I've created a slide show. It's fairly long but is a good sampling of what we've been doing. I've narrowed it down to approximately 25 photos of the more than 1,500 that I've taken so far.....